Thursday, September 8, 2011

Ready for the Big Screen?

Screenwriter Wayne Beach, now in his 20th year as a working screenwriter, will lead two workshops in October from his home base in Phippsburg, Maine.

Screenwriting: The Foundation is a five-day workshop for beginners that provides an intensive introduction to concept, story, structure, building characters, visual storytelling and the way the screenwriting business works. The workshop, limited to six participants, takes place Oct. 25 -29. The registration fee is $850.

Building the Script is a five-day workshop for intermediate and advanced writers. The session is designed for writers who have a story and are trying to build the structure into an effective outline or for those who have a finished draft screenplay and are about to work on a revision. The sessions will help writers shape and sharpen their work. The workshop, open to six participants, takes place Oct. 11 – 15. The cost is $950.

Beach has written screenplays for Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, TNT, Fox 2000 Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures. He has developed projects for the makers of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Law & Order,” “The Fugitive,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Platoon” and “The Perfect Storm.” His filmed writing credits include “Murder at 1600,” “The Art of War” and “Slow Burn.”

In addition to having completed writing “Ten Good Men,” a feature film in development by Wolfgang Petersen’s Radiant Films, Beach is currently on assignment adapting “The Garden of Betrayal,” a new novel by Lee Vance published by Knopf.

Beach is a respected teacher of the screenwriting craft. He is on the faculty of Maine Media College and is teaching screenwriting at Bates College this fall. Previously, he taught screenwriting at Northwestern University for several years. Many of his former students have become successful writers, directors and producers in film and television.

Additional information on the upcoming workshops is available by calling (207) 389-1770 or emailing 44enigmas@gmail.com .